The present teachings relate generally to aggregation and presentation of data associated with geographic locations, and more particularly, to the analysis of geographic data tags generated by mobile devices or other sources to generate a regional profile characterizing features, attractions, and other points of interest for a given geographic area, which can be used to generate recommendations and other services for users.
In location-based services in cellular and other applications, a “tag” can be a keyword, text, or other attribute that is assigned to a piece of information to describe that information. One or more tags can be assigned to a piece of information by one or more users. A geographic data tag (“geotag”) can be a type of tag that incorporates a geographic location, such as latitude/longitude coordinates, along with associated attributes. A geotag can allow descriptive information to be associated with a physical location on Earth.
Presently, various Websites provide a capability to add geographic location information to items such as digital photos, tickets, blogs, and the like. Some digital cameras have the capability to add geographic location information to photos when taken, but do not provide the capability to automatically associate a piece of geotag information with the geographic location. Moreover, while mobile phones or digital cameras may be able to create geotags to attach to individual photographs or other objects, and share those geotagged objects directly with other users, no platform exists which can aggregate and analyze higher-order attributes reflected in geotagged data received from a number of users.
For instance, certain cellular phones may permit a user to store a map of visited locations in a given city and input geotagged ratings of individual restaurants they have frequented. However, no mechanism is available to upload that geotag information to a collective database that could then, for example, assemble and sort that information to make collective regional ratings of available restaurants to recommend to the user population, at large. Marketing and recommendation opportunities may therefore go unexploited, since the collective responses of users to various features and attractions in a given region are not organized or made available to other users in the vicinity. Even local residents in a region may not be aware of all the features and attractions available in their region, which information could be leveraged to create interest in new travel, vacation, recreational or other possibilities for those and other users.
Techniques and platforms may therefore be desirable that provide the capability to associate pieces of information with geographic locations in the form of geographic data tags, and aggregate and analyze the data contained in the geographic data tags to generate higher-level profiles of geographic regions, as well as produce associated recommendations derived from those regional profiles.